The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for processing data within a computer network. More specifically, it relates to facilitating provisioning of services within such computer network.
Corporate reliance on technology has become more complex and more pervasive. Increasingly, companies are identifying opportunities to extend their core business or cut costs using the Internet. Both trends have put increasing priority on integrating disparate business applications. For this reason, enterprise application integration (EAI) has emerged as a solution for allowing information technology departments to build bridges that are designed to unify their legacy systems into a single enterprise application. Ideally, the creation of this single enterprise application would not require sweeping changes to the underlying structures.
EAI suppliers typically offer end point solutions for managing business process interactions between end points within a computer network. Although a specific enterprise software package may be designed to transparently handle diverse business processes carried out by two or more end nodes, each specific enterprise software package requires releasing customized connectors or adapters which will work for the specific business processes and applications used by the specific end nodes. As a result, these enterprise solutions are not easily scalable. Additionally, scores of adapters need to be built for each vendor (for example, Oracle corporation of Redwood Shores, Calif. SAP AG of Waldorf, Germany, and PeopleSoft Inc. of Plessanton, Calif.). As each supplier releases new versions of their software. EAI vendors find themselves unable to gain traction under the burden of supporting their existing adapters.
Notwithstanding the benefits of EAI, the software costs and resource investments of EAI prevent small-to-medium enterprise (SME) customers from embracing EAI solutions. For SMEs, reliance on web service providers represents an increasingly attractive alternative.
The web service provider market is one of the fastest growing segments of the software industry. Service providers make enterprise applications (e.g., human resources administration, recruiting, travel and expense management, sales force automation) available to customers over the web at a server device. Those applications are fully managed and hosted by the provider, providing significant cost savings to enterprises.
Some providers merely host and manage third-party packaged software for their customers (“managed hosters”). Others build new applications from the ground up to take advantage of the benefits and cost-savings of web service provider model. Service providers enjoy the profit margins and operational scalability of consumer Web companies like eBay Inc. of San Jose, Calif. and Yahoo! Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif. While at the same time offering the feature sets of complex enterprise software applications such as software applications by PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems Inc. of San Mateo, Calif.
Although the service provider approach allows a single business to set up a host server for allowing itself and its business partners to use third party or customs applications, this approach does not allow the set up and dismantling of complex arrangements between business partners. For instance, a first business may wish to allow a second business to access a first set of services, while the second business may wish to provide a second different set of services to the first business. Additionally, each business may wish to flexibly invite selected users (while denying other users) to access particular services.
In view of the above, there is a need for facilitating the flexible and efficient sharing of services between diverse business entities in a scalable manner. In other words, mechanisms for efficiently and reliably provisioning services between business entities (as well as other entity types) is needed.